Haswell: Up to 128MB On-Package Cache, ULV GPU Performance Estimates
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 12, 2012 12:26 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Haswell
- Trade Shows
- IDF 2012
Intel was surprisingly quiet about the remaining details of Haswell at IDF this year. We know the rough CPU architecture details, some info at a high level about the GPU and of course the platform power improvements. There is a lot more however.
We already know that in its quad-core GT3 configuration, Haswell will offer 2x the GPU performance of Intel's HD 4000 (Ivy Bridge GT4). What Intel didn't say however is that Haswell's ULV GT3 parts will offer around 30% better GPU performance than Ivy Bridge ULV GT2.
The improved graphics performance comes both from an updated architecture and more EUs, but also an optional on-package cache of up to 128MB in size. It's too early to talk about SKUs and DRAM configurations, but 128MB is the upper bound. Expect to see tons of bandwidth available to this cache as well.
On the CPU side you can expect a ~10% increase in performance on average over Ivy Bridge. As always we'll see a range of performance gains, some benchmarks will show less and others will show more.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
View All Comments
tipoo - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Only the ULV parts do? Or is it optional for every type? Is the 2x with or without the cache?Ken g6 - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
And will this cache be available to the CPU as well as the onboard GPU? Whether by default or by special instructions, accessing it from the CPU could be useful.MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Yeah, this sounds like something the CPU might love to use. And not only on ULV parts.aicom64 - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
I doubt it would have a huge effect on performance since most consumer workloads are I/O bound anyway and even L3 today isn't a huge performance impact in most consumer workloads but it would be interesting for some very large computationally complex data algorithms.tipoo - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Yeah, it's would be a bit like IBMs Power7 in that regard, with a huge on die memory chip.mrdude - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
Decoupled ring from the CPU so I'd highly doubt it. It seems like it's a GPU-only thing.I'm also assuming that the ULV parts won't have much of it in order to remain at that 17W TDP. There's just no way a 128mb cache can fit within that TDP.
Kevin G - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
I wouldn't put money on it being accessible as a cache by the CPU. Rather I **think** that this memory is directly accessible by the CPU as memory. Its actual cache functionality is managed by software at the driver level to determine what gets stored there.winterlude - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - link
This doesn't make sense to me. Do you mean 130% faster? Isn't Haswell's GT3 already double Ivy's best offerings?andykins - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
I think it's because Haswell's ULV chips have a 10W TDP whereas Ivy Bridge ULV is 17W. To reducd the TDP so much and still see a perfomance gain is pretty impressive!LuckyKnight - Thursday, September 13, 2012 - link
Question is.. Have they fixed 23.967 hz output